framed in cherry.
The woodworking shop was two miles away along a two-lane road. She could have hitched a ride with Chris in his pickup, but at six a.m.! Anyway she liked to walk through the woods. It took more time. She’d discovered she was interested not in saving time but in spending it. She chose a longer route along a path of old-growth trees and new saplings and spiders’ webs and busy wasps. Brushwood guarded her way.
Then she turned off again, along a second path that led to a narrow river with a gentle decline. The water splashed swiftly through groups of pearly rocks, then leveled. She called this little plaything of nature the Falls. Alders by the side of the brook were dropping leaves thin as tin. Cylinders hung in tiny clusters from their branches, protecting the pollen of the spring to come. On the other side of the river the ground was green with tiny, ivy-leaved veronica boldly rising. They would straggle through the winter and in April greet the sun. And greet Ingrid too—she often visited in April, when the opera season was over. Nearby, unseen, caterpillars were spinning their cocoons.
She noticed one day that a black stone was awaiting her on the path. She picked it up. Partially smoothed and also jagged, veined with green, it seemed to throb on her palm. She slipped it into her back pocket.
From these private Falls, she returned to the main path and went on to the woodworking shop. There, as Chris had predicted, she deftly handled the business of the business. Her office was a little doorless room off the large shop floor. During her few idle minutes, she watched the men at work. She saw chests and dining tables and moldings in the making, and sometimes an artistic element—an elaborate architrave which would surround a simple window. She thought briefly of her own slatted Manhattan blinds. She admired the tools: drills and chisels and gouges and what seemed like hundreds of kinds of saws. She loved the planes that lifted a thin epidermis from a plank. There wasn’t much conversation on the floor, although one man, Danny, older than the others, sometimes took his break at her desk and talked about his beekeeping. He lived alone in a cottage and grew vegetables. He told her that the black and green stone now resting on her desk was chromite. The rough part could be smoothed. “I know a silversmith who could set it, and you could wear it dangling from your neck.”
My long, long neck… But she didn’t say that. “I don’t want to tamper with it” was what she did say.
At the end of the day she tramped back through the woods. At the familiar black stove she prepared dinner with Lynne and Chloe. Then came the eating of dinner, and the washing up, and then Sorry! or television or reading. They had no stereo. She wanted to give them a piano but they wouldn’t accept it. She could will her own Steinway to them and then fling herself onto the Falls, but she’d just smash her kneecaps on the rocks.
Sometimes, in the late afternoon, if Chris had loaned his pickup to someone, that someone drove him from the pellet plant to the shop. From there, Chris offered to walk her home, grave as a suitor. He pointed out things that she was not yet clever enough to notice: the hunting spider, which does not build webs but instead spies her prey and chases it and pounces. He showed her a toad crawling to his death while nearby a generation of tadpoles, some of them his progeny, sped through the water. His fingers lifted a low branch and there bloomed a miniature plant with a tiny dark flower: a plant that lives its whole life under a leaf, hostage to its own nature, visible to no one except some expert winged pollinators. Its story would make a good opera, Ingrid thought; no, not an opera, a ballet, a ballet meant for children. She imagined lines of well-dressed kids and their grannies lining up to see The Lonely Flower. If she were in New York she’d be obliged to take Allegra’s grandchildren…She
The woodworking shop was two miles away along a two-lane road. She could have hitched a ride with Chris in his pickup, but at six a.m.! Anyway she liked to walk through the woods. It took more time. She’d discovered she was interested not in saving time but in spending it. She chose a longer route along a path of old-growth trees and new saplings and spiders’ webs and busy wasps. Brushwood guarded her way.
Then she turned off again, along a second path that led to a narrow river with a gentle decline. The water splashed swiftly through groups of pearly rocks, then leveled. She called this little plaything of nature the Falls. Alders by the side of the brook were dropping leaves thin as tin. Cylinders hung in tiny clusters from their branches, protecting the pollen of the spring to come. On the other side of the river the ground was green with tiny, ivy-leaved veronica boldly rising. They would straggle through the winter and in April greet the sun. And greet Ingrid too—she often visited in April, when the opera season was over. Nearby, unseen, caterpillars were spinning their cocoons.
She noticed one day that a black stone was awaiting her on the path. She picked it up. Partially smoothed and also jagged, veined with green, it seemed to throb on her palm. She slipped it into her back pocket.
From these private Falls, she returned to the main path and went on to the woodworking shop. There, as Chris had predicted, she deftly handled the business of the business. Her office was a little doorless room off the large shop floor. During her few idle minutes, she watched the men at work. She saw chests and dining tables and moldings in the making, and sometimes an artistic element—an elaborate architrave which would surround a simple window. She thought briefly of her own slatted Manhattan blinds. She admired the tools: drills and chisels and gouges and what seemed like hundreds of kinds of saws. She loved the planes that lifted a thin epidermis from a plank. There wasn’t much conversation on the floor, although one man, Danny, older than the others, sometimes took his break at her desk and talked about his beekeeping. He lived alone in a cottage and grew vegetables. He told her that the black and green stone now resting on her desk was chromite. The rough part could be smoothed. “I know a silversmith who could set it, and you could wear it dangling from your neck.”
My long, long neck… But she didn’t say that. “I don’t want to tamper with it” was what she did say.
At the end of the day she tramped back through the woods. At the familiar black stove she prepared dinner with Lynne and Chloe. Then came the eating of dinner, and the washing up, and then Sorry! or television or reading. They had no stereo. She wanted to give them a piano but they wouldn’t accept it. She could will her own Steinway to them and then fling herself onto the Falls, but she’d just smash her kneecaps on the rocks.
Sometimes, in the late afternoon, if Chris had loaned his pickup to someone, that someone drove him from the pellet plant to the shop. From there, Chris offered to walk her home, grave as a suitor. He pointed out things that she was not yet clever enough to notice: the hunting spider, which does not build webs but instead spies her prey and chases it and pounces. He showed her a toad crawling to his death while nearby a generation of tadpoles, some of them his progeny, sped through the water. His fingers lifted a low branch and there bloomed a miniature plant with a tiny dark flower: a plant that lives its whole life under a leaf, hostage to its own nature, visible to no one except some expert winged pollinators. Its story would make a good opera, Ingrid thought; no, not an opera, a ballet, a ballet meant for children. She imagined lines of well-dressed kids and their grannies lining up to see The Lonely Flower. If she were in New York she’d be obliged to take Allegra’s grandchildren…She
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